


Rinse It Away

by IttyBittyTeapot (LittleSeedofDarkness)



Series: Canonverse Drabbles [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Bittersweet, Established Relationship, Facial Shaving, Fluff, M/M, canonverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-12-01 00:30:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11474817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleSeedofDarkness/pseuds/IttyBittyTeapot
Summary: Eren returns from a mission, he's dirty, disheveled, and to Levi's dismay, his beautiful face is covered with a beard.





	Rinse It Away

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this last month around the time manga spoilers came out, and finished it up and posted it on my Tumblr last week. I figured I'd toss it up here and start a series for the drabbles and one-shots I have sitting in my computer that are almost finished. 
> 
> This is some of that flowery, quiet, warm stuff I enjoy writing sometimes. I also really needed to just write some canonverse so bad. :) Thanks for reading. I hope you like it.

  There’s a feel to Eren’s skin, as alive and real as the scent that paints it. Levi has it memorized, soft and warm with a silkiness that’s never been tainted by the long hours spent under the sun, nor the wash of gore that’s been strewn across its smooth expanse. No amount of blood and grime and blade oil have ever come close the destroying it.

  It’s what catches Levi’s attention after the glint of painfully beautiful eyes, and right before his lips find their way back home.

  When Levi stands on his tiptoes, reaches up to catch love in his hands, and embraces Eren after long days parted, he relishes the tickle of Eren’s hair on his nose. Rubs his face across Eren’s neck, reacquaints himself with his heat even through the dust and sweat, and the lingering smell of winds that have long since died. There’s a scratchiness there, it resides on Eren’s chin and jaw and cheeks, and it bothers him more than dirt and grease ever could.

  Levi likes the long hair, but that stubble leaves a different feeling altogether. It makes Eren look older, and that's not in itself a bad thing, but it reminds him of how much Eren has lost and how much he has lived through. How tired and worn he knows he is and how he never had a chance at anything near a normal life. How he’s moving closer to being out of his grasp.

  It threatens to topple over the innocence inside of Eren that has always gone untouched. The innocence that Levi sees in shining sad green eyes even when he writhes and cries out beneath him. Something so precious and immutable that Levi has never been able to capture it or unthinkingly whisk it away. He’s thankful for that because he doesn’t desire to. It’s something to protect and often times he feels as if he’s cupping his hands around a flame that a storm is attempting to snuff out.

  “Let me wash you,” Levi says as he pulls away. The suggestion is not borne from disgust or aversion, but need to reveal Eren’s purity, to shower him in light.

  “Do I smell that bad?” Eren asks with a smile and chews on his lip.

  It’s levity meant to ease Levi’s mind, he knows this. He knows Eren is aware of the weight that’s found its home inside him. They don't speak of it, that future loss too powerful of a specter to cross their lips and still not near enough. But time is a fleeting thing, and though their shared love is not, one day they’ll be broken in half. When that page turns, the memory of baths and tiny smiles and whispered confessions against lips will be the currency they use to barter with the loss.

  It haunts Levi when they’re separated, pulls him into a grave, piles of soil falling over his body, pinning his limbs until he can barely breathe. When he’s about to swallow mud and choke, there’s always a hand clasping around his, heaving him up. Loving eyes looking back when Levi opens his. Loving eyes that say, ‘ _rinse it all away, then cover me in you.’_

  Those eyes are peering at him now as Eren strips, accompanied by the sweet smile spurred with the comfort and familiarity of their ritual. And it’s only after Levi has prepared the water and Eren is bare before him, stepping into the tub, that Levi realizes how poetic it is that Eren’s body bears no scars. Unlike Levi’s own skin, which is marred with evidence of a life hard fought, Eren’s are hidden underneath ethereal smoothness, and more exist under there than Levi ever suspected.

  “You’re tense,” Levi whispers as delicate pale fingers reach out toward bronze shoulders. He doesn't need to touch to know, can see it in the way the muscles roll, how they twitch when Eren settles back as his eyes flutter shut. Too tired to hold the weight of the world when he doesn't need to pretend anymore. 

  “I’m always tense when we’re apart,” Eren admits.

  Levi’s been pulled like a bowstring, always is when Eren’s behind enemy lines, needs to release his tension focusing on Eren. Make sure all the dips and curves of his body are exactly the same, that his heart flutters against his palm exactly how he remembers when he lays it on Eren’s chest. Leaves it there and closes his eyes, rubs his nose in the messy hair at the crown of Eren’s head. He still smells like the clean version of himself there, more than anywhere else. A hint of shampoo lingering along with fresh citrus and breeze and dewy spring mornings.

  Still, Levi knows, the sooner he rinses Eren of the horrors that cover him, the sooner he’ll be himself again. He washes, washes, washes it all away. Dirt and torment scrubbed off with tender gliding strokes. Not only meant for Eren’s benefit but Levi's as well. Reinforces Eren is still here, that he’s _his_ Eren and not a hollow shell, bereft of everything he loves.

  “I missed this,” Eren says, watches rivulets of water slip down his chest before he leans his head back to brush lips over Levi’s while he diligently massages clean shoulders, “I missed you.”

  Levi answers by deepening the kiss. The action comes easier for him than words do in moments like this. When he floats down into comfort from the heights of anxiety and gnawing fear that settled deep in his gut and lived there for days.

  When he pulls back, he presses little kisses against Eren’s mouth not able to completely move away. Mumbles against Eren’s cheek when his chin makes his face itch.

  “This has to go,” he says, eyes the scraggly beard like it’s a titan about to consume him.

  Eren smiles. Smiles like he always does through everything. “You don't like it?”

  “No.”

  “Part of my disguise.”

  Eren’s grinning at him, and of course he thinks it’s funny. He always does. Grabs the storm cloud from the sky and beats a silver lining out of it.

  “You should let me shave it,” Levi says as he stands, winces slightly at that persistent pain in his leg.

  “Whatever you want,” Eren whispers, smirks before he’s dunking his head under the water to wet his face.

  Levi can see Eren reflected in the blade when he resurfaces, runs a hand over his face, and Levi’s lips quirk in a secret smile as he prepares the shaving soap. It has a fragrance that compliments Eren’s natural scent, and he chooses it for this reason. Subtle and almost muted, like the smell of pollen that catches the nose on a hot summer day.

  He doesn't understand how they can still enjoy these moments with the weight of the unspeakable perils they’ve endured and the promise of more upon them, but somehow that dread ebbs away with the simple, intimate tasks they share.

 That revelation makes the blade in Levi’s hand feels surer than those in his hands on the battlefield. Hands that have ended life, but run so gently, so slowly over Eren’s neck as he resettles behind Eren, and he tilts his head back. Glances down into glinting green eyes that smile at him with a mischievousness that Levi knows all too well.

  “Don't slip, _Captain_ ,” Eren whispers playfully in that now deeper voice before he closes his eyes and sighs.

  “Then don't move, Brat,” Levi admonishes, but there’s a smile behind it as he begins to smooth the cream over Eren’s neck and face.

  There are moments when Eren makes a soft little noise, and his lips tug up, and Levi watches all the worry slide away from his expression. Watches carefully as he uncovers his lover with each careful pass of the blade. Scrapes, scrapes, scrapes away the scruff as if he’s revealing a flower in early spring that was blanketed by a late vengeful snow.

  Eren swallows slowly when Levi pauses to wipe the blade. “I don't like it either.”

  “Why?” Levi asks, wipes away the stray foam from Eren’s neck.

  “Because I can't feel your hands on my face,” Eren confesses. “Or your lips.”

  “You will soon.” Levi almost smirks at that.

  Like two halves that complete the other, Levi is always heavier after they've been separated, while Eren is light. Has to fill up their shared quarters with jokes and gaiety to push away the sorrow they felt, and it rubs off on Levi. Pulls him up out of the abyss, pulls him into Eren’s arms after Eren cleanses him of his desolation the same way Levi cleanses Eren of the dirt and sand and grief.

  “I more than love you,” Eren hums as he closes his eyes again, and Levi carefully resumes cutting away the fuzz from his face.

  It’s not too deep, but more than Levi can respond to easily. He’s not as profound as Eren, who manages to always have the perfect words hanging on his tongue. Murmurs endearments that make Levi’s heart ache with devotion so expansive it feels like he’ll crack sometimes, and it will all come cascading out like a dam breaking.

  It’s how he feels watching as he uncovers Eren, exposing his beauty stroke by stroke. Fingers trailing over fresh, clean skin that’s revealed to him inch by inch. Soft and warm and youthful and begging to be covered with presses of his lips.

  The last bit makes his hand tremble as the anticipation travels up his spine, careful short swipes killing that too thin mustache before he’s wiping the last remnants away with a towel.

  “Beautiful,” Levi breathes as Eren rubs his hand across his face, tests the feel, looks up at Levi like he just rescued him.

  Eren reaches out, finds Levi’s hand and pulls it to his face. “Thank you.”

  There’s no need to say it, and Levi feels like he should be thanking Eren, thanking him for loving an old broken man who tethers himself so tightly to Eren he frets that he’ll suffocate him. Loves a man who needs to shave Eren’s face before he takes him to bed. Loves a man who will spend hours that night staring into his eyes to confirm Eren’s still there. Keep them both up into the early hours of the morning because he won’t be able to sleep out of fear Eren will have disappeared before he wakes.

 He says the only thing he can. Finds words that have been stuck deep down under all the fear for years, ones he’s nearly graced Eren with thousands of times. “You complete me.”


End file.
